The Microsoft Flight Simulator is considered one of the most popular and best simulators ever. A new version is finally coming in 2024, bringing features that have not been present in the previous iterations of the series.
What makes the Flight Simulator so special:
- You control various airplanes in Microsoft’s flight simulator all over the world. The game is so realistic that many fans first go looking for their own house.
- Despite fierce competition in the genre, such as from the Farming Simulator, the Flight Simulator is regarded by many as the best simulator ever.
- The latest version was already released in 2020. The Flight Simulator 2024 will be released on November 19, 2024.
This is the new feature: In an interview with PCGamer, the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorge Neumann discusses the new version of his game. One of the major innovations: You can now exit the plane.
Neumann mentions that you can leave the aircraft and go for a walk wherever you please:
You can now, in 2024, leave the aircraft and walk around. You can literally go on your favorite mountain path to your favorite cabin in the mountains. Sit by the lake. Watch the sunset.
The ability to exit the flying vehicle is already available in Star Citizen. This Space Legs
allow for landing on a planet and exploring it – something that enables extensive exploration and is among the most popular features of the space game.
The Flight Simulator aims to become a “digital twin” of Earth. The goal is to have every ship, every oil rig, and every lighthouse in the world included in the game.
“We see every tree on Earth”
Neumann explains that the linking with Bing Maps and data from LiDAR scans ensures a highly detailed representation of the Earth. LiDAR stands for “Light detection and ranging or Light imaging, detection and ranging” and is a laser radar that, according to Neumann, creates a sampling point every 50 centimeters to 1 meter.
The chief explains:
We see every tree on Earth. We let machine learning check everything, and then we know where every tree is located, even down to the point of what type it likely is. And then we plant the trees, literally billions of trees.
Corrections will be made through patches and feedback from the community. If there is, for example, a forest in the Flight Simulator in Iceland that does not actually exist, it will be removed immediately.
The game should not become unnecessarily large. Neumann speaks of “50 GB or less” because much of the data will come from the cloud. For comparison: The Flight Simulator 2020 came with 130 GB and would have, if all subsequent add-ons were included, ended up with 500 GB or several terabytes of data, according to Neumann.
Simulators are a popular genre, especially in Germany. The Farming Simulator is a big deal here. And not just among gamers; even the actual economy has an interest in the farming game: A €30 game from Switzerland has completely changed how farmers buy tractors today.
